If you invest even a little bit of your time in keeping on top of developments in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, you will have seen at least some of the blogs, reports and articles reminding us all that the world failed to attain the Millennium Development Goals’ sanitation targets — by a wide margin.

The Sustainable Development Goals give us a second chance to get it right, but they seriously up the ante. Instead of “merely” providing half of the unserved population with access to improved sanitation, as the MDGs required, the SDGs tell us we can only declare success once every person, every school and every health facility has — and uses — safely managed sanitation facilities.

We have 15 years to get it right. Given the below-average results we obtained in the past 15 years, it is clear that we should ask some hard questions and examine the evidence emerging from the field, in the hope we can do much better in the next 15 years.

Pilots never fail, and never scale

Anywhere in the world, if we look hard enough, we can find successful, innovative projects changing people’s lives for the better — and not only in sanitation; this is true for every sector.

The assumption that successful pilots will — by some unexamined magic — lead to sustained scale up efforts is mostly false and, as a result, we seem stuck with repeated small-scale successes, rather than impact at scale. In the past I have labeled this observation “Rosenboom’s law on pilots:” Pilots never fail, and never scale.

Plan International supports Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) implementation in a number of districts in Nepal. In this learning brief, we review Plan International Nepal’s CLTS activities. We found government targets and definitions to be ambitious while decentralized planning allowed a focus on community-led processes. Plan International and other sanitation practitioners can support CLTS outcomes by providing post-triggering training and technical support to community volunteers, focusing on achieving gradual, yet sustained outcomes in program areas, and continuing to work with local governments to ensure that financing mechanisms for the poor are locally developed and equitable.

Left to right: Radu Ban (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Babar Kabir (BRAC) and Bernadette Blom (Goodwell Investments), panelists at the workshop Making Sustainable Business out of Sanitation. Photo: Peter McIntyre

The business case for sanitation in developing countries is testified by the thousands of small scale entrepreneurs springing up to tackle problems of open defecation and process faecal waste and urine.

Will these businesses be profitable and sustainable? Can they address the huge scale of the problem? Will they address the issues in rural areas as well as urban areas? These questions are much harder to answer.

The evidence from an event at the International Water Week leading up to the Sarphati Sanitation Award was mixed. The workshop Making Sustainable Business out of Sanitation, showed a high level of innovation and enthusiasm for businesses to address two of the most intractable public health and environment issues of our age – the 2.5 billion people who don’t have access to safe hygienic toilets and sanitation, and how to deal with human waste.

A new WSP working paper, What Does It Take to Scale Up Rural Sanitation? shares lessons and best practices that were identified to:

• generate demand for sanitation at the household and community level;
• increase the supply of affordable, aspirational sanitation products and services; and
• strengthen local and national governments to lead large-scale sanitation programs.

Over the last 30 years, most rural sanitation projects have had pockets of success, but were small in scale and could not be scaled up. Learning how to expand on the successes of small-scale projects to increase access at large scale has been an enduring challenge. Project outcomes often fail the sustainability test once external funding ceases, and the benefits, even if sustained, remain limited to project areas.

Despite growing political will to do more about rural sanitation, the lack of evidence and examples of effective and sustainable large-scale rural sanitation programs has constrained governments and development partners. In an attempt to help address these issues, starting in 2007, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) provided technical assistance to help governments design, plan, implement, and monitor national rural sanitation programs that start at scale and are sustainable. This initiative was carried out in three countries, India, Indonesia, and Tanzania. In each country, at scale service delivery was led by governments, communities, and the local private sector.

Key components are introduced and illustrated with examples from the field, including an overview to programmatic approaches that have been combined and tested to create demand, change behaviors, and improve supply chains: Community-Led Total Sanitation, Behavior Change Communication, and Sanitation Marketing. The Working Paper introduces the basic methodology for these approaches, and the roles of national and local government and the local private sector, and discusses strategies to strengthen the enabling environment and build capacity to achieve and sustain improvements in rural sanitation.

South Africa will host the 12th annual World Toilet Summit in Durban from 3-6 December 2012. The South African Toilet Organization (SATO) is co-organsing this annual World Toilet Organization (WTO) event.

The main theme of the Summit is African Sanitation: Scaling Up – Dignity for All.

Providing environmentally safe sanitation to millions of people is a significant challenge. The task is doubly difficult in a country where the introduction of new technologies can challenge people’s traditions and beliefs.

This report examines the current state of sanitation services in India and offers six recommendations that can help key stakeholders work toward universal sanitation coverage in India: scaling up pro-poor sanitation programs, customizing investments, exploring cost effective options, applying proper planning and sequencing, adopting community-based solutions, and forging innovative partnerships. The recommendations were based largely on an ADB study on household sanitation and drainage in India.

ADB’s empirical study entitled “Sanitation in India: Progress, Differentials, Correlates, and Challenges” (2009) attempts to discern key policy conclusions that could assist India in meeting its set goal of “Sanitation for All” by 2012. It looks at (i) safe disposal of human excreta, as measured by household ownership of a sanitary latrine; and (ii) household access to drainage facilities. It investigates the trends, socio-economic differentials, and correlates of household sanitary latrines from 1992 to 2006, and provides rough cost estimates for universal coverage.

Hi Tore, by coincidence I just returned from Namibia where we ran some trials heating/drying FS from Otji-UDDTs. We put a black 90L container with cover and containing about 40 L FS into a metal lined box (approx. 1 x 1 x1 m3) covered with a glass and into the glaring Namibian sun. We measured temperatures in the box, in the container and in the FS and had t […]

Thanks for the comment Tore. The oyster mushroom fruit is edible and highly nutritious. Theoretically the fruit of oyster mushrooms used for treating human faeces could be eaten. Source: www.smithymushrooms.co.uk/ However there are some practical issues with the idea: - Ensuring that the oyster mushroom fruit is well cleaned - Ensuring that no pharmaceutical […]